Shirley Povich, Legendary Washington Sportswriter

WASHINGTON — Shirley Povich, who covered every World Series since 1924 and other major sports events in a long career with The Washington Post, died Thursday after suffering a heart attack. He was 92.

Although he officially retired in 1974, Mr. Povich continued to write columns for the newspaper.

His last one appeared Friday. It was about baseball and was vintage Povich, skewering fellow columnist Tom Boswell's suggestion that St. Louis Cardinals home run hitter Mark McGwire's recent feats outshine even the fabled Babe Ruth.

"Whoa there. Give McGwire the last four years . . . but don't confuse him with the guy who inspired such sobriquets as the Sultan of Swat and the King of Clout," Mr. Povich wrote.

He sent the column to the Post's sports desk Wednesday from home after a six-week absence due to illness.

Right alongside the final column was a tribute from Boswell.

"It's about baseball," Boswell wrote. "His first love. In it, he needles me. Mark McGwire comparable to Babe Ruth? Such apostasy cannot be allowed to stand! Perfect. Shirley Povich died setting the record straight."

Mr. Povich wrote more than 15,000 columns in seven decades with the Post. His column, "This Morning," ran six days a week from 1926 to 1974.

"Shirley Povich was why people bought the paper," said Ben Bradlee, retired executive editor. "For a lot of years, he carried the paper, and that's no exaggeration."

Mr. Povich was front and center at some of the biggest sports milestones, including Cassius Clay's stunning defeat of Sonny Liston in 1964 and, in 1995, Baltimore Orioles infielder Cal Ripken's breaking of Lou Gehrig's streak of consecutive games played.

In his unobtrusive manner and with a quiet New England way of speaking that the Maine native never lost, Mr. Povich also was considered one of the finest gentlemen in the sometimes inelegant world of sports.

A teenage stint as a caddy got him invited by Post publisher Edward McLean to come to Washington to work for the paper as a copy boy in 1922. Two years later, he registered his first byline.

He is survived by his wife, Ethyl, and three children, including Maury Povich, the television talk-show host.